Fumito Ueda on Last Guardian Trivia, Female Main Characters, and 3D Gaming

September 16, 2010 ·
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Sony’s behind-closed-doors Team Ico presentation at this year’s Tokyo Game Show didn’t include any huge unveils or pieces of news. Instead The Last Guardian’s U.S. producer interviewed Team Ico’s Fumito Ueda about his upcoming game, before taking audience questions to finish things off. Here are the highlights:

According to Ueda, the developers at Team Ico struggled with creating the technology and the games side-by-side on Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, so they decided to focus on the tech first for The Last Guardian and “lock the core elements” before moving heavily into the rest of the game’s development. He notes that the team is currently at the end of the “trial and error” phase.

Ueda’s goal with this year’s TGS trailer was to communicate two things — first, that players shouldn’t assume a sad ending because of how Ico and Shadow of the Colossus ended, and second that the bird/cat creature Trico now has more animation when it moves around.

Early in development, the main character in The Last Guardian was female, but the team ended up going with a boy. The reason: they thought it would be more realistic that he would have enough grip strength to be able to climb around, and because they wouldn’t have to worry about camera angles with a girl who wears a skirt.

While Ueda confirmed that the PS3 remakes of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus will be playable in 3D, he’s not ready or able to say the same about The Last Guardian at this point. “We’re not sure yet,” he said when asked. He added, that both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus were originally developed with “3D centric designs.”

Talking about the collection, Ueda said that U.S. players will finally get the Shadow of the Colossus ending that was previously reserved for European players; trophy support will be included, Shadow of the ; Colossus will now run at a fixed 30 frames per second; and the textures in both games have been updated and made to work in 3D. However, there won’t be any other content changes made to either title. Also, both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus will ship on a single disc for PS3 in the U.S. and Europe.

In response to a question about whether there will be any official ties in The Last Guardian’s story to Ico or Shadow of the Colossus, Ueda said that’s the kind of thing he usually leaves until the end to decide. “Honestly, at this point, we don’t know,” he said.

Sony’s official plans put the Ico/Shadow of the Colossus collection out in Spring, with The Last Guardian in “Holiday 2011” (we’ve heard November as a rumor). It’s safe to say we’ll probably be covering these once or twice more between now and then.